The National in Chistchurch, New Zealand, was founded in 2004 by Caroline Billing to raise the profile of New Zealand jewelers. She is currently showing work by a really imaginative jeweler named Octavia Cook. I love artists who make up myths or narratives about their work and Octavia is one who does. The jewelry itself […]
Patti Bleicher and Eileen David started Gallery Loupe in Montclair, New Jersey, United States, six years ago. They show a roster of both established and emerging international artists and are interested in furthering the dialogue that contemporary jewelry evokes. In February they asked Kiff Slemmons, an established American artist, to show her most recent work in an exhibition called Huesos. I caught up with Kiff and asked her a few questions about her work and her interests.
Susan Cummins: Kiff, I know you have been working with artisans in Oaxaca, Mexico for the past ten years and that these paper pieces represent work you did with them. Please tell me something this project and the resulting work.
Kiff Slemmons: These pieces emerged from an art residence at Arte Papel Oaxaca. The artist and members of the atelier did the work together. Early pieces referenced African jewelry with discs built up into sculptural bead forms. Later pieces exhibit the techniques of folding, cutting and hollow-punching, rolled and formed paper pulp. The atelier is dedicated to ‘reviving the pre-Columbian tradition of making paper from natural fibers.’ The result of this project is a collection of paper jewelry, which is highly sculptural and utilizes indigenous plants, fibers, natural and synthetic dyes.
Talking about paper in Oaxaca involves countering assumptions about the material, its fragility versus strength, the metaphoric implications of paper in this regard, in relation to books and the culture at large. What paper meant in pre-contact culture in Mexico, its magnified significance after conquest and its current place in culture today. How I came to work as I did there means looking at my previous work, how it might have led to such a project which involves a kind of world view through jewelry and writing. My work is really not technique determined, even with the paper. It’s ideas that interest me first and the possibility of being poetic in a visual language.
Mike Holmes and Elizabeth Shypertt of Velvet da Vinci in San Francisco, California Deb Lozier, Brooch, 2012, De Patta stones, 6 x 3.5 inches
The De Patta Project Read More »
Bruce Metcalf, Installation at Snyderman Gallery Gijs Bakker, Jablonec, held in 1968 in the Czech Republic
Original Design Redux Read More »
Nancy Worden, Initiation Necklace, 1977. Silver, rhodonite, copper, pills set in epoxy, and plastic hair curlers, 27 x 3 x 1 1/4 inches. Tacoma Art Museum, Gift of the artist. Photo: Doug Yapple. Finding Favorites in the Collection Thinking about which work in Tacoma Art Museum’s collection of studio art jewelry is my favorite brought
During the month of February the Galerie Rob Koudijs is featuring two outstanding exhibitions: Tobias Alm: Traces of function and Terhi Tolvanen: Introduction. Tobias is a younger emerging artist and Terhi is a well-established maker but showing for the first time with this gallery. Rob is very articulate about their work and his gallery. Read on.
Susan Cummins: How would you describe the kind of contemporary jewelry you represent?
Rob Koudijs: Here’s what it says on our website: ‘The gallery specializes in contemporary art jewelry which communicates ideas, has sculptural qualities and an innovative use of materials. The gallery represents a very motivated group of jewelry artists who produce work challenging the borders of the applied and the fine arts.’ This still hold true for what we are aiming for and both exhibitions live up to this goal.
Have you represented the two jewelers you are featuring in this exhibition for a long time?
Yes, I’m pleased to say we both picked them when they graduated. Terhi Tolvanen when she had just finished her master-education at the Sandberg Institute (connected to the Rietveld Academy) here in Amsterdam; Tobias Alm at the time he made his bachelor exhibition at Ädellab (Metal Department), Konstfack, Stockholm in Sweden in 2009.
Tobias Alm: Traces of function and Terhi Tolvanen: Introduction Read More »
Cherry Lebrun Susan Cummins: How the relationship between Valentines Day and jewelry get established from your perspective? Cherry Lebrun: Jewelry is often considered to be a romantic gift. Valentine’s Day is a romantic holiday. I think the two fit together very naturally in that Valentine’s Day is a celebration of romance and jewelry is often
Happy Valentine’s Day Read More »
Brooke Marks-Swanson, Pink Form- Brooch/Pendant, 2012, copper, acrylic, 18K gold, 22k gold leaf, cobaltoan calcite, 4.25x2x.5” Susan Cummins: How long have you been represented by Taboo Studio? Brooke Marks-Swanson: I was first invited to be in a show in 2008 and then Jane saw my work at the AJF Geography show this past summer
Color and Form: Brooke Marks-Swanson Read More »
As promised here is Kevin Murray’s response to Bruce Metcalf’s article. What do you think about this? Please respond to blogger@artjewelryforum.org
Beyond the occasional comment on a blog site, it’s rare for someone to put the effort into mounting a well-framed argument to express their disagreement. I’m naturally inclined to defend my point of view, but am grateful for the opportunity to continue an argument that will hopefully strengthen both positions.
Bruce Metcalf responded critically to an article I wrote for AJF about ethical jewelry which was recently reposted on this blog. The kind of ethics I mentioned ranged from the democratic values involved in the critique of preciousness to Ethical Metalsmiths that recruit practice to environmental sustainability.
Ethics is a particularly sensitive subject for jewelry. Jewelry seems to be a medium we set aside from more weighty matters for the enjoyment of frivolity, irony and dazzlement. Expecting moral rectitude from jewelry can appear like throwing a wet blanket on a rare space of innocent play.
Yet we are aware also of monsters lurking in the woods. Jewelry has a profoundly undemocratic history, serving to prop up the aristocratic and military one percent. Stories about ‘blood diamonds’ suggest the trail human and environmental destruction that leads to breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Throw off the wet blanket and go wildly ethical. Read More »
Collecting jewelry through Facebook? It’s possible. An ephemeral act of collecting occurred in the social media world in April 2011, after SOFA NY in New York City. There, Sienna Gallery presented Costume Costume: An Opulent Project. The Opulent Project is a collective working out of Portland, Oregon, that was formed in 2006 by Erin Gardner
Collecting And Social Media Read More »
Recently I came across Bruce Metcalf’s response to a text by Kevin Murray that AJF published on its blog a few months ago. Kevin’s text, ‘Aesthetics Versus Ethics: Judgment Day for Contemporary Jewelry,’ was written in preparation for the critical discourse session that AJF convened at the SNAG conference in 2011. We published it, Bruce didn’t like it and wrote about it on his blog. By then, we’d launched the new website and Kevin’s text hadn’t been moved over. So, in honor of what we think could be a useful moment of debate, we bring you Kevin’s text, below, and suggest you check out Bruce’s response, ‘Let History Be The Judge,’ on his blog. We’ve asked Kevin if he has anything else to say, and we’ll be publishing his thoughts on the AJF blog in a few days.
The other day I found Benjamin Lignel’s recent post in Art Jewelry Forum, ‘Just what is it that makes today’s art galleries so different, so appealing?’ It was a teasing title. A quick Google revealed its source as a collage by Richard Hamilton, satirizing 1950s consumerism.
So what makes the art gallery so appealing for contemporary jewelry? Benjamin was reflecting on the first exhibition of contemporary jewelry at Gargosian Gallery, arguably the most prestigious commercial visual art space on the planet. It was an occasion well worth noting. What followed was a series of salutary disappointments. Rather than select a known figure of the contemporary jewelry scene, Gargosian chose the work of a fashion designer with Dior, Victoria de Castellane.
Aesthetics versus Ethics: Judgment day for contemporary jewelry Read More »
In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. Keith Lewis gave this short and swaggering answer. Try reading it with a cowboy twang. On second thought, perhaps a homoerotic bass tone would work better . . .
The Tool
My favorite tool is a Craftsman brand machinist’s reamer that belonged to my father. As an object it is completely beautiful: tapered, fluted, sharp and poised. It is also singularly specific in its usefulness. It makes holes bigger and is good for nothing else.
I use it all of the time and whenever I pick it up I remember the smell of my father’s shop and the sense of violation I felt selecting tools after he died.
A construction worker who walked like John Wayne and could have been a craftsman, my father made useful things around the house. I have his checkering tool, used for texturing gunstocks. I have a scribe he made from an old dart. And I have his machinist’s reamer.
Keith Lewis is from the wilds of Pennsylvania, where he learned that he liked men a whole lot more than he liked man stuff such as hunting and fishing. He is a jeweler and teaches in the wilds of Washington state, though he craves the city. His favorite fruit is jaboticaba.
